Design is the most important stage in the process of realizing a product. Almost 95% of production costs are committed during the design phase of a product. Hence manufacturers spend considerable time and effort in avoiding errors. The design phase necessitates that the designer perform a set of tasks repeatedly to ascertain the feasibility and effectiveness of a particular design. Some of these tasks cannot be performed without the creativity of the designer. Moreover, these tasks are interconnected and hence warrant an iterative design process. To reduce the design time, the time taken for each execution of the steps and the number of design iterations themselves are to be minimized. The advent of computers and consequently tools such as Analysis, Optimization and 3D (three-dimensional) parametric modeling has greatly reduced the design time by reducing the time taken to perform each step.
Just as mass production was crucial to manufacturing in the 20th century, mass customization will be the key to economic growth in the 21st century. Making this transition will be difficult for product manufacturers because of a number of issues. One significant issue is the elapsed time associated with the design phase of products, especially those that employ diverse supply networks. Currently, an excessive amount of engineering time is spent searching for, analyzing, and modeling (CAD (Computer-Aided Design)) existing products and concepts for viable designs. Configuration helps to reduce design time by capturing the internal knowledge of a company in the form of rules and allowing quick production of design variants. An intelligent system across diverse supply networks is imperative to synthesize customized products by means of rapid configuration. Current configuration systems are limited to a single class of products and intra-company use.
The past century has been the age of mass production, ever since Henry Ford began his assembly line in 1903. Mass customization is the production of customized products at mass production rates. Mass customization trends have been observed in markets such as clothes (Lands' End), computers (Dell and bicycles (NBIC Japan). Customers' underlying desires, motivations and emotional triggers are the foundation for an industry's success. Many industries have innovated by using the power of the modular product architecture. Designs have been modularized in order to (1) increase variety, (2) postpone product differentiation to customize for local markets, (3) reduce inventory costs, and (4) reuse parts, associated process, and infrastructure across products. This sales model, which has been proven by companies such as Dell and Black & Decker, requires manufacturers to be market-driven and customer-responsive, which means offering more product variants, thereby adding more options and allowing customization.
Adopting mass customization poses some serious challenges and significant business benefits for manufactured product environments and particularly for the United States' economy. Twenty years ago, collocation of supply chain entities allowed for concurrent engineering and knowledge sharing within a company. In the past decade, organizations have become specialized in engineering functions and have found it economical to outsource manufacturing. The knowledge transfer and exchange among entities in a supply chain may be referred to as the Knowledge Supply Chain (KSC). Today the KSC is inefficient because outsourcing dramatically increases the number of places where the KSC can break down, and amasses hidden costs and times.
Some major challenges associated with mass customization in a dispersed product engineering environment are: (1) coordination of the product design across suppliers, (2) flexibility in the manufacturing infrastructure, (3) finding appropriate resources such as standard parts, and (4) effective human interaction. In addition, products should be engineered to manufacture in the volumes, times, and economies demanded by the consumer. When these challenges are addressed, the vision of mass customization promises manufacturers several benefits: they could offer more services, achieve greater levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty, gather advance information on market trends, and reduce inventory levels.
Thus, there is a desire to improve the design phase of product development to permit greater coordination within the industry and to leverage existing knowledge.